The Arrival

This artwork featured in Synthetic Landscapes (2017).

TheSuper8 film was shot in the Jardin d’Agronomie Tropical (The Garden of Tropical Agriculture) in Nogent-Sur-Marne, in the eastern suburbs of Paris. The gardens were created in 1899 as a place where scientists coordinated agricultural experiments with plants brought from French colonies around the world.

Arancio’s film documents the remaining greenhouses, relics and site of the agronomical experimentations led by a group of scientists, particularly the growing of species of plants which led to the mass introduction of exotic florae across French colonies, which subtly influenced and altered their landscapes.

During several visits to the garden, Arancio discovered fascinating archive material dating from colonial exhibitions held in 1907 and 1931, offering visitors an opportunity for a glimpse into the life of unknown communities in places such as Indochina, Africa and Tunisia. Exhibition visitors could observe plants in their respective national pavilions in recreated ‘native’ environments. Today some of the original ‘villages’ are still in place but the buildings, fenced off from visitors, have all almost completely collapsed.

More than recording the imposing colonial history the garden still holds, the film takes us through a journey within a dystopian landscape, where a time-space dimension has ceased to exist. It follows Arancio’ s fascination with the apocalyptic vision naturally fuelled by the surrounding landscape, subtly interweaving overgrown nature and uncanny pieces of architecture; in brief, the encounter of the real and the imaginary confined in a physical space, which the French philosopher Foucault would define as “Hétérotopie.”

Images: Salvatore Arancio, The Arrival, Stills from looped video with sound, 2014. Images courtesy of the artist. 

 

About the artist

Salvatore Arancio

Salvatore Arancio exhibited in Synthetic Landscapes, Weston Park, Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery, 2017.

Image: Salvatore Arancio, The Arrival. Still from looped video with sound, 5 mins 57 seconds, 2014. Courtesy the artist.